Now my unfortunate problem is that I am suffering real bad from a plenitude of plenitude, i.e a curse of consuming plenitude itself, i.e. a deep desire to consume all the books, articles, comments, papers, journals, magazines etc etc. that discuss issues of plenitude in modern consumer society. And its driving me nuts, to the point that sometimes I feel that I just want to give up – a real case of “Amazon Overload”!!
While reading it I thought of the old post by Ton
With all the enthousiasm that comes with entering new uncharted territories at first everything is interesting. All special interest groups on KnowledgeBoard are worth contributing to, all interesting blogposts, and boy there are many out there, are worth commenting on or reflecting on in your own blog. You reach addiction levels when you start being afraid to miss something interesting.
But that eagerness takes its toll. There is no real time to filter all that passes before your eyes, as you’re already sprinting to the next interesting post as soon as you’ve linked to the last one. And finally there is the time when all that discovering and exploring, and playing with ideas for fascinating projects, becomes too much.
I’m learning to deal with this thirst for new insights, to let it go, to make sure I have time for a reflection, for working on a bigger canvas and for the “simple act of human contacts” as John Moore puts it commenting on the post of Chris.
There is so much real pleasure and satisfaction to be had in the simple act of human contact without the need for an orgy of consumption.
And I keep coming back to my own mantra: let’s put relationships before ideas. Blogging at its worst becomes a diet of too many ideas and not enough real contact. We tend to think of innovation as inherently good, but an awful lot of grief is caused by the championing of an abstract idea in a way that trashes relationships. It’s a mistake I catch myself making, or about-to-make, quite often.
Tags: learning vs. doing, meta-learning, synchronicityArchived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/12/17.html#a870; comments are here.
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